Motl Brody of Brooklyn was pronounced dead this week after a half-year fight against a brain tumor, and doctors at Children’s National Medical Center in Washington say the seventh-grader’s brain has ceased functioning entirely. But for the past few days, a machine has continued to inflate and deflate his lungs. As of late Friday afternoon, his heart was still beating with the help of a cocktail of intravenous drugs and adrenaline. That heartbeat has prompted Motl’s parents, who are Orthodox Jews, to refuse the hospital’s request to remove all artificial life support. Under some interpretations of Jewish religious law, including the one accepted by the family’s Hasidic sect, death occurs only when the heart and lungs stop functioning. That means Motl “is alive, and his family has a religious obligation to secure all necessary and appropriate medical treatment to keep him alive,” the family’s attorney wrote in a court filing this week.

In other words, poor Motl Brody is a corpse, and the corpse is kept breathing by a machine, but ‘some interpretations of Jewish religious law’ say that in fact he is alive because of this machine-made breathing.

His brain has died entirely, according to an affidavit filed by one of his doctors. His eyes are fixed and dilated. His body neither moves nor responds to stimulation. His brain stem shows no electrical function, and his brain tissue has begun to decompose…Jeffrey I. Zuckerman, the attorney for Motl’s parents, says they have been “utterly shattered” by the hospital’s actions. He stressed that the family’s demand for continued life support was based on their obligations under religious law, not an unrealistic hope that their boy will recover…”We respect the family’s beliefs, and have tried since the patient’s arrival in June to work closely with them in a spirit of mutual respect,” the hospital said in a written statement.

What’s interesting here (as often before) is the special status of putative ‘obligations under religious law’ and the deference that is automatically given to them even when there is the attempt to disregard them. The hospital is perhaps socially required (so to speak) to say ‘we respect the family’s beliefs’ even though the beliefs are grotesque enough to ‘oblige’ the family to keep a corpse with a decomposing brain breathing on ‘life support.’ What’s interesting is that there is no other kind of law (at least none that I can think of) that would work that way. What other kind of law could a lawyer cite in this situation? ‘His family has a [____] obligation to secure all necessary and appropriate medical treatment’ – what could you put in that space that would work? I can’t think of a damn thing, can you? Only ‘religious’ law and ‘religious’ obligation can get people to ‘respect’ and defer to this kind of perversity. And the parents in question are apparently being downright truculent about it.

Motl’s mother and father, Eluzer and Miriam Brody, haven’t been to the hospital since July. The medical center says its requests to speak directly with them have been rebuffed, and in recent days, hospital employees “have been inundated with harassing and threatening calls” regarding the case.

So Motl suffered without his parents from July to November, yet those same parents think they have a ‘religious obligation’ to keep his corpse artifically breathing while his brain rots away. Baffling.

10 Responses to “Religious obligation”

There was a similar case in Canada late last year. A Mr. Samuel Golubchuk was dying in a Winnipeg hospital, and his doctors wanted to remove him from life support. There were two considerations, as I recall. First, Mr. Golubchuk was dying. Second, keeping him on life support was not only extending his life, but was also causing severe suffering. Mr. Golubchuk himself was unable to express his own wishes.

The similarity between the cases lies in the fact that both appeal to Orthodox Jewish Beliefs. In Mr. Golubchuk’s case some of his doctors resigned, being unwilling to prolong pointless suffering. In young Motl’s case, there is no suffering. Arguably, Motl is already dead. Mr. Golubchuk is still alive, and Canada’s foremost legal authority on assisted dying (Jocelyn Downie) argued that his family’s wishes should be respected, and that they were best able to express what Mr. Golubchuk himself would have wished. (I am not sure of this. Mr. Golubchuk suffering might have been of a very different opinion than when he was still able to voice his own wishes in the matter.)

In both cases, however, artificial means of sustaining life are (were) involved. The question for those, like Mr. Golubchuk’s family, and Motl’s family, who rest their case on religious grounds, is why religious beliefs require the continuation of artificial means of sustaining life in such cases when, clearly, the religious beliefs involved originated long before such means were available.

I find it hard to understand. If the ‘natural’ span of life is so important to religious belief, why are such mechanical means of life support considered so decisive?

For myself, as some readers of this blog will already know, I do not think that it makes a lot of sense to talk about ‘natural’ in this context at all, and that decisions should be able to be made by individuals regarding the time and manner of their own dying. But I am puzzled by the role that religion is playing in this debate. Are the religious really clear what it is that they believe and why they believe it?

What I found interesting is that the parents’ lawyer says they are under no illusions about their son’s medical situation.

They know he is dead, but a book written thousands of years ago says otherwise. Instead of concluding that this book is wrong, they insist on acting as if it is not and forcing everyone else to do likewise.

They have to keep the machines going because otherwise they would be breaking a rule they read in a book and chose to believe even though it is obviously absurd.

It never ceases to amaze me how people will so willing suspend all normal thought processes for beliefs that have been arbitrarily labelled “religious.” Especially considering that beliefs only get labelled “religious” when there is no epistemic justification for them.

This kind of obsessive legalism seems quite distinct from the sanctity of life/will of god/spiritual benefits of suffering line which we are used to from the christian angle. It is as though their book is more important than their god, let alone their humanity.

Hasidicism equates with loving kindness. Where has it, vis-à-vis the parents of the child, disappeared to at all. From July to October seems to me to be a very long time to be away from one’s young off-spring, who is in a crucial state in hospital. They seem hardly to me, in light of this knowledge, to be the right people making the crucial decisions.

This kind of obsessive legalism seems quite distinct from the sanctity of life/will of god/spiritual benefits of suffering line which we are used to from the christian angle. It is as though their book is more important than their god, let alone their humanity.

In some ways it is, indeed, quite distinct, in other ways it is not distinct at all, at least so far as obsessive legalism is concerned. Read the following account of a woman who has spent the last 17 years in a comatose state. The Vatican protests her father’s plea to have her taken off ‘life support’:

This is obsessive legalism. In the case of Motl Brody, whether or not he is removed from life support hurts no one (aside, of course, from the cost of continuing life support, nursing care, etc.). Nor, I suggest, will anyone be harmed by taking Eluana Englaro off life support. I don’t tind this only baffling (Ophelia’s word). I find it absolutely bizarre.

But obsessive legalism applied to someone who is suffering and chooses to forego the benefits thereof may not be bizarre, but it is baffling. What’s more, it’s cruel. And to speak of the sanctity of life, while forcing someone to undergo suffering that they wish to bring to an end, is ‘quite distinct’ only in so far as it is an offence against human dignity. Motl Brody or Eluana Englaro have, arguably, no dignity left to offend. Suffering people do. To offend that dignity, and to speak of sanctity at the same time is, indeed, baffling. It remains an obsessive form of legalism, but of a more serious and destructive kind.

Is the parents’ “obcessive religious legalistic” quest in any way depending on public healthcare? (I ask becaus I’m a Scandinavian :-) )

I can anticipate a number of ways, e.g.:

1) The cost for running the artificial life preservation scheme at the hospital.

2) Occupying equipment and staff that else could have been put to better service for other patients with better prognoses.

Both alternatives have in my opinion moral implications. The former by unnecessary draining the total funds avaiable for useful treatment ( in principle -it could even be a matter of life saving treatment). The latter by running a risk that potentially life-saving equipment and staff is unavailable in an emergency situation. It could be a matter of life or death -for others.